After a lengthy BS session and a few minutes to play with some new toys…rapier and special forces shovel from CS we got a late start:)

2 rds shadow boxing
2 rds Savate
2 rds freestyle footwork

Onto grappling:
1 rds ground engagement
2 rds off balancing grip work
About a half hour going over a faked single leg grab into a hand reap followed by work with various leg hooks and set ups.
2 rds sambo
1 rd ground work

Never got around to doing any weapon work and still managed to train for 2 1/2 hours. We probably need to streamline how we are doing things to get more into less time.

Injury report…..well I am just old I guess, my left knee is killing me and at some point my left hand must have gotten smashed. i don’t remember it at all but upon waking up this morning I found it swelled and very sore.

I was sick this week and while i felt fine, I thought i would sit out the grappling and play coach just in case i was still carrying that nasty bug. If my training partners get sick, who will I train with next week?:)

So with me coaching..
1 rd grip work
3 rds sambo wrestling
Very defensive work this week, which might be a bit boring to watch but nothing wrong with that at all. What ground was taken was worked hard for by everyone.

For something a bit different, this week I broke out the entrenching tool and we worked through some of the basic defenses against a long blade and a bayonet thrust. For source material we are using several WWII era Soviet manuals plus a bunch of neat stuff that Ralph G. was nice enough to send me. I also recently scored a Russian lang dvd of shovel work that seems fairly well removed from the systema style of shovel work most commonly shown. Some of it is the same but it seems more based on the older manuals.

Living in the snowbelf here in Ohio, it just makes good sense to carry around a small shovel in the car. Why not let it serve double duty this year?

Just two of us today…..Justin had a prior commitment, Guv resting on
his laurels after scoring his 14 second KO in his fight last week,
Chris injured….so just Matt and I today.

Started with a rds of footwork for warm up
1 rd offblancing/grip work
3 rds sub wrestling without jackets
1 rd sub wrestling starting from the knees
20 sprawls with the med ball
20 sit ups with the med ball
10 med ball slams

We then got into a discussion of rough and tumble and worked through
some of the common techniques and differences between it and wrasslin
and ended up with two short bouts to illustrate how much no rules
changes things….just nasty but fun:)

We ended the session with lots of bouting:
single stick
JdP
mountain axe
knife
shillelagh